PanoramaForeign Ministry building recounts Czech history in a new novel

The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs is located in the majestic Baroque
Černín Palace just above Prague Castle. The majestic building, as well as
the nearby Loreta Church, plays a major part in a recently published novel
titled “Chvála oportunismu” or “In praise of opportunism”. Its
author, Czech diplomat Marek Toman, a guest in Radio Prague’s Czech Books
programme earlier this year, works at the ministry and knows the building
inside out. I began by asking him how he came up with the idea to make the
actual palace the narrator of his latest book.

Marek Toman next to the bust of Jan Masaryk, photo: Pavla Horáková
“Actually, it was a very natural thing because it came at once, during
one special occasion. Because every year, the Foreign Ministry organizes an
open house, so everyone can come and go through the corridors and visit the
chambers and on. And the employees of the Foreign Ministry serve as
voluntary guides. So I was exactly in this position, explaining to the
audience the details concerning this indeed majestic, monumental building.
And then I was able at a certain moment to see myself from the outside as
someone who is talking, who is describing the details, precisely or not
that much, because sometimes the questions were pretty detailed and in this
moment I experienced something pretty strange, I would call it even
spiritual, because I was able to imagine the Černín Palace as a person
watching myself and thinking: ‘My God, what is this person talking
about?’ because I know the reality. And then it came to me, I was able to
listen to the specific voice. And I was able to imagine the perspective the
palace would probably be using if it were a person.”

And who is he, as a person?

“Well, he is definitely male, that’s very important about him. He is
even macho. He is from an aristocratic family of Italian origin, being a
little bit, I would say, above the surrounding landscape of Prague. The
Černín Palace is located even higher than Prague Castle itself. So he is
full of self-confidence, he’s very quick on judgment, he could be sort of
arrogant. He doesn’t like certain concepts, like democracy for example,
and his several hundred years of history gives him a sort of superior
position and great self-esteem. So he is sort of intolerable, very
difficult to live with and so on.”

What were some of the crucial events taking place within its – or his
– walls?

Černín Palace, photo: archive of Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
“The history of the palace is very colourful. It begins in the second
half of the 17th century but my novel concentrates on the 20th century
mainly. It’s about history but of course it’s very much about the
position of the Czech nation here in the centre of Europe and about the
historical events of our modern times. And there are two crucial
personalities. It is the Protektor Reinhard Heydrich who was the lord of
the palace in the 1940s for actually quite a short period and then Jan
Masaryk who was foreign minister of Czechoslovakia in exile and then back
in Czechoslovakia after 1945. And these two men represent absolutely
opposite personalities. Heydrich being very aristocratic, very efficient as
an official and leader, being quite inhuman, while Jan Masaryk is
absolutely the other side of things – someone with a great sense of
humour, someone very human and maybe not always able to deal with politics
and especially totalitarian politics. But surprisingly the palace has its
own liking and he is definitely more on the side of Heydrich, I’m sorry
to say.”

We should also mention that Jan Masaryk was the son of Tomáš Garrigue
Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia…

Photo: Torst
“Yes, so really, the Czechoslovak elite of the First Republic. You asked
about the events. So probably the most dramatic, dark, obscure event
happened in 1948, that was shortly after the communist putsch and Jan
Masaryk, even though he was a democratic minister, he stayed within the new
communist government to live only a couple of days more. And then he found
his death actually in the courtyard of the palace after a fall from the
window of his flat. So that’s a mysterious story. There were four
criminal investigations, that’s also being described quite in detail in
the text but up until the current times, this mystery is really staying
with us – was it natural death, was it murder, and so on. And it’s part
of the bunch of legends related to the palace. It’s one of them,
actually, the legends from the past talking about the aristocratic
inhabitants of the palace. This one is quite modern but it has all the
Černín symptoms, I would say. So it’s really difficult to understand
and you have to take positions when it comes to the answer how was it, how
did it happen.”

On a more cheerful note, there’s also a romance involved in the story.
Who is the object of Černín’s desire?

Černín Palace, photo: Miloš Turek
“Well, so I would repeat, he is a man, he is a nobleman, he finds his
object of admiration and love quite nearby because on the opposite side of
the square there is a much smaller building. It is Saint Loreta, a place of
pilgrimage, and a copy of the house of Virgin Mary, a place of Catholic
cult. And Saint Loreta being of Italian origin and being a she, attracts
his attention, his admiration, and he tries to play all the possible ways
in which men can attract the attention of a lady. Not very successfully,
because there is a deep difference in their nature, their beliefs, their
character, so he tries quite desperately to shock her, to win her over, but
it’s pretty difficult for him.”

Is the palace just a passive observer of the happenings inside or does he
interfere?

“That’s a question the people who are working here ask themselves, I
would say. Because that’s a shared experience that there is really
something strange inside, the outsiders describe it as a feeling of anxiety
of something strange, because the palace is really way too huge for a
normal person, so if I admit these observations, then it’s clear that the
palace interferes indeed. And I was really curious about his reaction to my
book because I work here. So after the book was published, there was a huge
question what the reaction would be.”

And?

“And I think that I can feel some benevolent ignorance which I would say
goes hand in hand with my description of the character. So I hope we will
be able to live together even further.”